PVP balance - problem(s) and solution(s)?

[Haste]

Back in the day people used to have ships in most factions so when a fight happened they could swap around to balance

This is still the case. What has truly, fundamentally changed between "now" and "then" is that people, especially shot-callers in groupfights, were expected to keep an eye on the progression of a groupfight and adjust their side's "participants" as needed. Is the opposing group struggling to even chip away a few bots while your own side's shredding 5 nanobots from the main target every second? Everyone can easily extrapolate that that'll quickly get out of hand and result in a steamroll. So, you've got options, like:

• Replace your strongest players with a weaker player sitting around. Pull out "Wesker", put in your fresh recruit and let him get some experience.
  
• Simply fight outnumbered. Wesker can stay in, but you're giving the weaker side numerical overweight.
  

In addition, if your side takes out a ship, it used to be "proper etiquette" to take a player on your own side out of the fight. If you're only winning by a little, this is an opportunity to actually bench someone a bit weaker, if needed. You'd get - justifiably - chewed out in your faction feedback thread if you were found lacking in the fair play department. Nowadays I often hear people talk about the snowballing effect of brawls where taking out a single ship quickly lopsides it and results in the fight taking a decisive turn and ending soon thereafter. Guess what? That was always the case, people just intentionally prevented it from happening.

As someone who was quite often benched in this way in the past, I know that it's not particularly exciting to show up to a fight only to sit there twiddling your thumbs. I honestly still show up to fights rather frequently only to realize that whichever side I'd join would become slightly too favored for it to be a net improvement to the fun of the participants, so I just sort of bide my time until the fight resolves or until one side gets enough of an advantage for me to be able to join the other. Nowadays we've all got jobs taking up much of our free time, so I do get that people just log in and want to shoot shit, not watch other people shoot shit. Still, for the purposes of good PvP I don't really think there's any better solution.

And yeah. If you're asking someone to disengage but they don't, here's the solution: sit out yourself. You might not be able to control others, but you can control yourself. Hopefully.

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[Czechmate]

the classic debate of sportsmanship - its straightforward.

1. do not gank
   
2. do not restock (carrier is ok)
   
3. do not combatdock (unless ganked)
   
4. do not acestack - you know who you are
   
5. do not wait for more enemies, take the initiative and switch sides
   
6. do not engage in a fair fight - sit it out until your side starts losing. alternatively, engage the opposite side's reinforcements
   

feel free to add more onto my list

most importantly, DO NOT CONTINUE THE GANKCYCLE, sometimes shit happens, we cant control indies, if you see that a rowdy bunch of them are not listening, take the initiative and disengage yourself, let them take the heat. THE COMMUNITY HAS TO SELF-REGULATE, if it doesn't then it will downspiral to some of theawful engagements the event had.

oh, and don't be afraid to get blued, its just a VIDEO GAME.

It's very rare to see a thread completely nailed in the first response.

Probably the most important comment in this entire discussion:

DO NOT CONTINUE THE GANKCYCLE

"They did it first" is the worst excuse possible. We're a small community, most of us know each other by this point. It'd be nice if we could all agree to a sort of relationship reset and try a fresh start without immediately falling back into cliques that are out to get each other.

Strive for excellence and make the game fun for others and that effort will be recognised and reciprocated. Piling on a group because you were previously piled on simply ensures the cycle continues and the game gets saltier and more antagonistic for everyone, including randoms that get caught up in the pissing match through no fault of their own.

As an extremely important signature image says, "it's a game, I can die."

The reality is, a lot of people enjoy hurting others, this is why they play. For personal dislikes, to feel power, or just waiting to beat someone - if that wasn't the case we wouldn't have so many siege participants.

That's just the reality, and this is why if there will be any sort of attempt at mechanics that can be tested and one day implemented it would go a long way

[Nazawo]

if you're unhappy start accepting pvpers help instead of ghosting, lemon

much more effective than any other bullshit idea/talk

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[Czechmate]

Those are just facts- no need to be happy or unhappy about them, this thread was made by an events dev, the solutions should be about potential systems that can be implemented.

[Nazawo]

you factually turned this thread into XA- feedback by how unhappy you were, congrats, you're part of the problem you yourself denunciated

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[Czechmate]

Those are also just facts - that I've always known XA as the faction that both outskilled and outnumbered and piled my guys - but others will have experiences like that with different people - you don't need to get all emotional about this, any sort of a systemic solution (that I can't see because of engine limitations) would address this too

Seeing KDA on a ship or even player list somewhere would be pretty neat for example

[Wesker]

I kinda want to make a video addressing this topic honestly.

Many of the complaints in this thread point fingers at players, but you have to consider if you’re going to bring problems like these you also need to have sought out every solution. Many of you (and i dont mean this disrespectfully) have NOT sought every solution.


There is no easier time to improve at the game than right now. Even if you complain about players like me, I’m living in an island in the pacific with 250+ ping. I am probably playing at my lowest peak right now.

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[Fab]

And yeah. If you're asking someone to disengage but they don't, here's the solution: sit out yourself.

the secret to good PVP is to not PVP at all.

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I stopped caring. "fairplay", "etiquette", "self-regulation" is impossible to achieve outside of sign-up events. you want some balance, you create a matched event. outside of that, do whatever you wish as long it's by the rules.

"Did You Try?" yeah I did. I've been a shotcaller multiple times and every single time I gave up on balance because an indie that barely knows english with their fully kitted dreadnought started blasting anything that moves, be them on our side or not. I'm not sitting out because of others, I want to play the game and enjoy it. Apparently it's a very hot take nowadays.

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[Levenna]

Seeing KDA on a ship or even player list somewhere would be pretty neat for example

I guarantee you this will make every problem cited in this thread infinitely worse. Nothing will make a mildly above average pvper go out of their way to dunk on people RPing, or /1 /2ing random traders or whatever, faster than an ego boost for a bigger KDA number.

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[03.07.2024] LNS-Beast***: we can do this every day but you have to buy bigger stronger ships...and i'll help you

[Chenzo-]

Hi guys.
Something that came out of the recent event is that people were unsatisfied with some of the PvP engagements they were a part of. And in other cases, no engagement took place at all due to one side deciding not to show up to what looked to be an unfair fight.

I have seen something similar in other cases where sign-ups are not required, such as raids and impromptu pvp. People are either worried that one side of an engagement would be too stacked and don't show up, or they decide that the current fight is already over and pull out.

The examples above are not even talking about another type of balance issue that I'm sure you've seen - different player skill levels. But these two issues (number balance and skill balance) are ultimately tied together, so I think it makes sense to combine them for this discussion.

So my question for you is - is PvP balance a problem? And if it is, how do we solve the problem?

Step one:

Return everything back to how it was a 4.84- 200+ server number 100% of the time.

If it works, don't try and "fix" it.

Job done.

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